We are called to watch over one another in love. In Covenant Discipleship we do this and our discipleship groups become a checkpoint of accountability. In these groups we willingly make ourselves accountable to each other so that we may support one another in love. Our accountability centres around a covenant, drawn up by the group, and which centres around four different areas of spiritual formation:

1. Acts of devotion.

2. Acts of worship.

3. Acts of compassion.

4. Acts of justice.

Part of the journey will be wrestling with how we can apply the Sunday preaching in practical ways in our daily lives within this Covenant Discipleship framework. During the period of these meetings the Sunday preaching and the Prayer Diary daily devotional guide will focus on these four areas of the covenant.

The group will formulate their own covenant, with input from each member. Individuals will then be able to personalise their covenant, adding things that are specific to their situation. Weekly meetings are structured around the covenant that the group has drawn up and will serve to encourage and affirm the members in their spiritual journeys.

Meetings begin on Tuesday, 24 January/Wednesday 25 January 2012 and will continue on Tuesday evenings (19h00) OR Wednesday mornings (09h00), choose the one that best suits you. Meetings will run for an hour, followed by tea and coffee  and will run until the week before Holy Week.

Christ our life, you are alive in the tenderness of touch, in the warmth of community, in the insights of solitude.

Christ our life, you are alive in the creative possibility of the dullest conversation, the dreariest task, the most threatening event.

Christ our life, you are alive to offer re-creation to every unhealed hurt, to every deadened place, to every damaged heart.

You set before us a great choice. Therefore we choose LIFE!

The dance of resurrection soars and surges through the whole creation.

It sets gifts of bread and wine upon our table.

This is grace – dying we live. So let us live.

Amen

(Source unknown)

Jesus shared in many meals with people and these are all sacred moments. From the wedding at Cana to a simple fish braai on the beach for his disciples; dinner with the religious high-brow as well as supper with the outcast and sinners; the feeding of 5000 to the last Passover meal with the 12 in the upper room. The Eucharist (or Communion Service) continues these meals of Jesus, through his life, death and resurrection, as a sign of the nearness of The Kingdom of God.

These Sunday evenings are designed so that you may invite people along to share The Lord’s Table with us.

St Paul encourages us:

It is good to use Lent to grow spirituallly in whatever way is helpful to you and there are many resources that may help you on your Pilgrimage. At PMC we are beginning Lent by celebrating our 75th Anniversary in these buildings but we will be observing all the traditional Lenten and Easter Services, so watch the pew leaflets, Facebook page and website calendar for details and get involved! Take part in some sort of service, either by giving to the feeding schemes at the church or in another way at home or work/school. Use the Prayer Diary prepared by James each week to have daily or weekly devotion times where you spend quality time with God. Write down the things that strike you in a Journal and you will have a record of your experiences over time.

While you may not be able to fast from meals or certain foods, you can fast from certain attitudes: Fast from hatred and distrust and feast on love; fast from ill-temper and feast on peace; fast from negativity and feast on optimism, for example.

May this Lent be a time of reflection and learning!

On August 11, 1755, Wesley refers to an occasion when he conducted a service that provided opportunity for persons to make or renew that covenant with God. Listen to this account from his daily journal:

“I mentioned to the congregation another means of increasing serious religion, which had been frequently practiced by our foreFathers, namely, the joining in a covenant to serve God with all our heart and with all our soul.

I explained this for several mornings and on Friday many of us kept a fast to the Lord, beseeching him to give us wisdom and strength, to make a promise unto the Lord our God and keep it.

On Monday, August 11, I explained once more the nature of such an engagement, and the manner of doing it acceptably to God.

At six in the evening we met for that purpose. After I had recited the tenor of the covenant proposed all those who desired to give testimony of their entrance into this covenant stood up, to the number of about 1,800 persons..

Such a night I scarce ever saw before. Surely the fruit of it shall remain forever.”  (Source)

As we prepare to make Covenant this week let us consider our feelings towards God and the path He has called us to. Allow the Spirit to prepare our hearts so that our surrender may be generous and joyful, knowing that the Creator of the Universe only desires abundant life for us.

Christmas time is synonymous with hot summer days, wild thunderstorms, long holidays and a welcome break from routine as well as the gathering of family and friends to celebrate. It can be a rather bitter-sweet time though as we recall those who have died or who have moved far away and will not be physically present this year. The annual Service of Remembrance acknowledges that God is with us in the midst of our pain.

This year we spent time examining Psalms 23 and 139. Both are songs that remind us that we have a loving God who has taken great delight in our creation and loves to be a part of all of our life journey, from ‘quiet waters’ through the ‘valley of the shadow of death’. He is ahead of us, behind us and knows everything we are going to think or say, even before we do ourselves. This is true for us as we struggle through daily choices, and it is also true for those who have died or who have moved far away.

As a sign of surrendering our feelings of pain and loss and our distant loved ones to God, who is infinitely more qualified to deal with them, we lit tea lights from a larger, central candle, representing God’s light and presence.

This year the text for Sunday was Luke 17, verses 11 to 19. It is the story of the ten lepers who Jesus healed. They stood a way off (because their skin afflictions made it impossible for them to be around ordinary, healthy people) and shouted out to Jesus to have mercy on them. They must have heard about Jesus even though they could never have been part of the crowds who followed him wherever he went. Jesus looks at them and then tells them to go off and show themselved to the priests, which they actually did do. Quite amazing really, as they were only healed ‘on the way’, so it would have taken quite an act of faith to begin the journey to the priests before visible evidence of healing was given! This was what was required of them by law if their skin disease was healed, the priests had to confirm that this was the case and only then could they rejoin society.  Anyway, as soon as it became clear they were healed, one of the lepers returned to Jesus, shouting his thanks IN A LOUD VOICE, and throwing himself at Jesus’ feet, facedown, and generally making quite a spectacle of himself! Jesus does wonder that none of the others returned to give thanks, only this Samaritan, a foreigner, someone despised by the Jews, but he proclaims a word of grace: “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” And, in this case, ‘well’ means so much more than ‘free of leprosy’, it means whole, restored, redeemed. This wonderful and somewhat outrageous outpouring of thanks by the leper demonstrates much more than a polite response to a physical cleansing. In Matt Redman’s book, Facedown, he says that “Every posture in worship says something of both the worshipper and the One being gloried in. The raising of hands tells of a soul stretched out high in praise and the worth of the One being exalted. Joyful dancing interprets a grateful heart and points in adoration to the source of that joy. When it comes to expressing worship, what we do on the outside is a key reflection of what’s taking place on the inside. Out of the overflow of our heart we speak and sing, we dance, we bow. God reveals, we respond. God shines, we reflect. Facedown worship is the overflow of a heart humbled and amazed by the glory of God.” (Facedown, (c) 2004 Matt Redman.

To live more thankfully we need to make three changes in our way of thinking:

We need to change from a sense of entitlement to a sense that we are underserving servants of the living God. All that we have is gift, and the manner we live our lives is simply the job that we need to do on this earth.

We need to change from a feeling that there is not enough, to a knowledge that there is MORE THAN ENOUGH! God is generous – look at the stars in the sky, the numbers of birds, bugs and grains of sand! When Jesus fed 5000 there were 12 baskets of leftovers! The scarcity that we seem to experience comes from our own sin and inability to appreciate and share.

We need to change from Conditional Thanksgiving to Unconditional Thanksgiving. God loves us unconditionally and we are encouraged to give thanks in ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. Sometimes this is a tough call, but the more you give thanks the more you see to give thanks for!

Like the Samaritan leper in the Luke story we need to fall facedown at Jesus’ feet, giving thanks LOUDLY and allowing him to ‘make us well’. We need to make the connection between our wholeness and the One who has made us whole. We need to express on the outside how we are continually transformed on the inside.

In your day to day living how thankful are you? Think of a time you were most thankful.

How did or do you express gratitude, to God and to others?

What or who do you take for granted that you should be more thankful for?

How would your life change if you worked at being more thankful?

EASTER SERVICES 2010

Palm/Passion Sunday, 28 March – 08h30, 09h45 and 18h30

Tenebrae Service (Service of the Shadows),  Thursday 1 April – 19h00

Good Friday, 2 April – 08h30

Easter Day Sunrise Service on the kopje from 05h30 if the weather is dry! (Hilltop Road access)

Easter Day Services at the church – 08h30 and 18h30

Ash Wednesday, 17th February, marks the beginning of the season of Lent in the church calendar. 

Quite a change of pace!

Not long ago we knelt around the manger in the starlight, marvelling at the glory of God revealed in a gurgling baby; we sang songs inspired by angels and celebrated with gifts that glittered and glowed and surrounded us with fragrance and comfort.  Now we walk with Jesus ‘the road marked with suffering’,  from His baptism by John in the Jordan River to his eventual crucifixion at Golgotha and, finally, reach the awesome truth of resurrection on Easter Sunday.

All this sounds wonderful but I am   sick, poor, unemployed, homeless, angry, afraid, unworthy ………. 

Does this have anything to do with my life here, in South Africa, in the 21st Century?

Can this make any difference in my day of deadlines and traffic jams, corruption, unfair practice and plain old evil?

Paul encourages Timothy to take his spiritual development seriously: “Exercise daily in God—no spiritual flabbiness, please! Workouts in the gymnasium are useful, but a disciplined life in God is far more so, making you fit both today and forever. You can count on this. Take it to heart.” (1 Timothy 4 : 8) and Lent offers us 40 days to adopt a new regime. We will be following a Sermon Series called, “Surveying The Cross”. The sermon series (outlined below) will bring you face to face with Jesus on the cross and all this can mean for your life. For an in-depth exploration of how this can change your life in 2010 there will be a mid-week bible study/small group experience, led by James, where you can set aside the time to seek God’s will, ask questions, request prayer, set goals or simply enjoy the company of those on a similar road to you. You are encouraged to include a friend or loved one on your pilgrimage – invite someone you care about, who doesn’t already know God or who has fallen out of fellowship, to be part of our services as well as the mid-week studies during this time.

SURVEYING THE CROSS – A Sermon Series

Sunday Services take place at 08h30, 09h45 and 18h30

The mid-week studies are on the following Wednesday at o9h00 or Thursday from 19h00 – 20h30

Sunday 21st Feb – The cross: a place of fear? How can I live victoriously in a culture of fear?

Sunday 28th Feb – The cross: A place of new beginnings. How can I really leave my burdens at the foot of the cross?

Sunday 7th March – The cross: A place of direction. At the cross-roads – knowing God’s direction for my life.

Sunday 14th March – the cross: A place for living. How can spilt blood be life-giving? (Communion)

Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all! (Isaac Watts)